'Under The Hanging Tree' premieres on Thursday
News in short
More than half a decade after Perivi John Katjavivi began writing a police series, the film that originated from this idea, Under The Hanging Tree, will premier on Thursday evening at Ster Kinekor theatre in the Grove Mall."We were supposed to start filming in 2020 but faced several challenges, including Covid," Katjavivi said, who took on the director's chair for the production. Filming finally began in 2021 and concluded last year.
The film revolves around a hardened police officer's interaction with the supernatural and Namibia's colonial history after a man's body is discovered hanging from a tree. "My interest is not so much in the genocide as an event. I wasn't interested in a police film, or the genocide or colonialism. I just wanted to create a piece that gets to the understanding and heart of what it means to live now and have to look back into the darkness of our colonial history," he explained.
He said film is not empowered to bring about drastic political change but can instead create empathy.
He added that, in his view, there is a divide in the contemporary understanding of the genocide. "I think there are two extremes – either people don't know enough, and there is this culture of apathy, or they become too obsessed with it or exploit it for their personal purposes."